Waiting at airports can be a frustrating affair, especially late at night. Many large international airports provide a free wifi service, if only for a limited period. Not at Ivato International Airport, the official name for the airport that serves Antananarivo. There were a number of connections with information about the stands where you could obtain a password or pay for access, but all these were closed. Not surprising, as ours (to Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport) appeared to be the only flight to leave at 02:40 in the morning of the 10th!
Flights, waiting at Nairobi and meeting up with Angie and Billy at Heathrow were all uneventful, i.e. went perfectly according to plan. Angie told us that our flight still did not exist, even though we were standing next to her.
The only fact worth missing is that our flight from Nairobi was only partly filled, leaving John and I with a spare seat between us to stretch our legs for the long flight.
Tasks ahead include:
Finishing this Blog (done on 24 November)
Copying the text and images into book format, using the Blurb on-line publishing function. (nearly finished as I copied text each time that a blog was posted). Jonathan Clark has kindly offered to do the proofreading once a draft .pdf version of the book format is available.
Selecting some 400 digital images and movie clips to prepare a 45 minute presentation for the 2017 presentation season (partly completed as many of the images included in this blog will be included)
Finish planning for the next trip, a Ferothon in Mexico. Tickets for our flight on 1 February are booked and the outline route needs to be firmed up.
See you all back on the Blog then – Merry Christmas and a happy New Year until then!
The Cactus Trip Diaries 
Comments on: "Thursday 10 November – Antananarivo to Amesbury" (3)
If you need another proof reader, I’m pretty good. I also do Euphorbia World & Schuetziana
It sounds and looks like Madagascar hasn’t changed for the better since the time I was there in 2001 although I’m surprised you did see so many things knowing the rate people are burning their Island.
It helps to have guides who know better than I do what I wanted to see and where to find it! Doing the Blog and now preparing the presentations for 2017 helps me to realise how much we saw – mainly by looking at how much I had to leave out! You can see what I rated to be the best 155 out of some 3,500 images and movie clips!